Gentlemen On 4 May.:
Magnus said: > > > ...it seems Pirsig left a giant hole between his biological level and > > > his social, and this hole are by default and without much thought > > > filled by the biological level, when it's much more logical to fill it > > > with the social. Magnus' seeing a hole here is due to his weird notion of all aggregates as societies. The best way to see the point of departure is where the next level starts to interfere with its parent's freedom. Cells does of course not hamper the organism rather they are the organism. I think the common notion of beehives and anthills is that they are loosely knit organisms in themselves. Matt replied: > > I agree with ants and bees, but I hesitate on cells. I begin to lose > > hold on what the hell biological is supposed to be, let alone if you > > extend it even further. Then again, my knowledge of biology isn't that > > great. To my mind, the only way to effectively do justice to both > > biological evolution and cultural evolution is to toss this four level > > idea. Just call the major changes as you see them and sucks to trying > > to make Pirsig's work. After all, Pirsig came up with them for > > empirical reasons, though the four is a nice fit, as Plato saw, too, in > > his divided line. Matt don't speak to me so it's useless. [Krimel] > I think the big problem may just be in the name of the social level. > Societies or banding together in groups to enhance survival is a > biological strategy for reproductive success. What Pirsig is really > talking about at this level is more like 'culture' which is uniquely > human and the term better conveys the idea he is aiming at. I suspect, > though, that after spending about a fourth of the ink in Lila trashing > anthropology he just couldn't bring himself to use that term. Agreement with Krimel (for once) Pirsig's idea is that any level starts as an advanced pattern of its parent and for an indeterminate period being "in its service", thus banding together as in primate tribes is for "reproductive success". I even think Krimel is right about "culture" as a social pattern, note the several instances where Pirsig speaks about criminal gangs (brigandage) as biological forces. Something that contradicts this is his use of psychiatry (mental illness) as the cultural immune system in contrast to police as the social such. Here I think he went a bit helter-skelter. Culture is the widest social pattern there are while the said psychiatry is intellect's immune system. Bo Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
